A Judge Tried to Block Teacher Pay Raises. The Governor Won Anyway.

A Baton Rouge judge tried to stop Governor Jeff Landry from delivering a pay stipend to Louisiana's public school teachers. By the end of June, the governor had won anyway, and the lawsuit that tried to block him fell apart entirely.

The fight traces back to a problem Landry and the Legislature created for themselves. For three straight years, the state has provided temporary annual stipends of $2,000 for teachers and $1,000 for support staff, funded through the budget each session. This year, lawmakers didn't set aside the roughly $198 million needed to continue that practice, banking instead on voters approving a constitutional amendment that would have freed up permanent funding for educator pay raises. Louisiana voters rejected that amendment on May 16, the second time in as many years they'd turned down a similar proposal. Rather than let teachers eat a pay cut heading into the new school year, Landry issued an executive order on June 2 redirecting $168 million out of the Minimum Foundation Program, the formula that sends state dollars to K-12 school operations, and into a fourth year of stipends.

The plan needed legislative sign-off, and it got it emphatically. The Senate approved it 37-1, and the House delivered 76 votes, six more than the two-thirds threshold required. That is about as close to a legislative consensus as Baton Rouge produces on anything, with lawmakers from both parties recognizing that letting teacher pay fall was a worse outcome than the trade-offs involved in Landry's funding shift.

That didn't stop three education advocates, including a former school superintendent and a sitting Orleans Parish School Board member, from suing to block the plan. Their argument was that Landry had overstepped his constitutional authority by unilaterally reallocating money the Legislature had already approved for a different purpose, and that the proper path would have been a special legislative session with public hearings rather than an executive order ratified by a remote, mail-in vote. A Baton Rouge judge, Richard "Chip" Moore, agreed there was enough substance to the claim to issue a temporary restraining order on June 18, freezing the governor's plan just as it was supposed to take effect.

The order didn't survive. On June 29, Moore lifted the restraining order and disqualified the plaintiffs' law firm, Baker Donelson, after determining the firm had a conflict of interest: it was simultaneously representing the state, including the Landry administration, in a separate federal lawsuit over Louisiana's foster care system. A firm can't sue the governor in one courtroom while defending him in another, and once that conflict came to light, the legal foundation of the case crumbled. Rather than scramble to find new counsel and continue fighting a losing battle, the plaintiffs withdrew their lawsuit entirely on June 30, clearing the way for Landry's order to take effect as scheduled on July 1.

The result is exactly what Landry set out to deliver: no funding cliff for teachers, no reduction in take-home pay for the educators actually in Louisiana classrooms, and a resolution reached without raising a single tax. Landry has been direct about the framing, noting on social media that not one dollar is leaving public education, since the money in question is being redirected to teacher and staff paychecks rather than cut from the system altogether. Critics will keep arguing that shifting $168 million out of school operations budgets, the pool that covers everything from facilities to non-classroom staff, will force some districts to tighten their belts elsewhere. That's a fair conversation for future budget cycles. But for this year, the outcome is straightforward: the governor made a promise to Louisiana's teachers, an activist lawsuit tried to stop him on a technicality-laden procedural theory, and the promise is being kept anyway.